men, but also rabble that had congregated near the Pantheon—­proceeded to the other side of the Seine to Ramorino’s house, the crowd increased like an avalanche till it was dispersed by several charges of the mounted police who had stationed themselves at the Pont Neuf.  Although many were wounded, new masses of people gathered on the Boulevards under my windows in order to join those who were expected from the other side of the Seine.  The police was now helpless, the crowd increased more and more, till at last a body of infantry and a squadron of hussars advanced; the commandant ordered the municipal guard and the troops to clear the footpaths and street of the curious and riotous mob and to arrest the ringleaders. (This is the free nation!) The panic spread with the swiftness of lightning:  the shops were closed, the populace flocked together at all the corners of the streets, and the orderlies who galloped through the streets were hissed.  All windows were crowded by spectators, as on festive occasions with us at home, and the excitement lasted from eleven o’clock in the morning till eleven o’clock at night.  I thought that the affair would have a bad end; but towards midnight they sang “Allons enfants de la patrie!” and went home.  I am unable to describe to you the impression which the horrid voices of this riotous, discontented mob made upon me!  Everyone was afraid that the riot would be continued next morning, but that was not the case.  Only Grenoble has followed the example of Lyons; however, one cannot tell what may yet come to pass in the world!

The length and nature of Chopin’s account show what a lively interest he took in the occurrences of which he was in part an eye and ear-witness, for he lived on the fourth story of a house (No. 27) on the Boulevard Poissonniere, opposite the Cite Bergere, where General Ramorino lodged.  But some of his remarks show also that the interest he felt was by no means a pleasurable one, and probably from this day dates his fear and horror of the mob.  And now we will turn from politics, a theme so distasteful to Chopin that he did not like to hear it discussed and could not easily be induced to take part in its discussion, to a theme more congenial, I doubt not, to all of us.

Literary romanticism, of which Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael were the harbingers, owed its existence to a longing for a greater fulness of thought, a greater intenseness of feeling, a greater appropriateness and adequateness of expression, and, above all, a greater truth to life and nature.  It was felt that the degenerated classicists were “barren of imagination and invention,” offered in their insipid artificialities nothing but “rhetoric, bombast, fleurs de college, and Latin-verse poetry,” clothed “borrowed ideas in trumpery imagery,” and presented themselves with a “conventional elegance and noblesse than which there was nothing more common.”  On the other hand, the works of the master-minds of England, Germany, Spain, and Italy, which were more and more translated and read, opened new, undreamt-of vistas.  The Bible, Homer, and Shakespeare began now to be considered of all books the most worthy to be studied.  And thus it came to pass that in a short time a most complete revolution was accomplished in literature, from abject slavery to unlimited freedom.